As Trump struggled to gain endorsements from major celebrities, many of them called on fans to vote for Harris.
For Kamala Harris’ campaign, celebrity endorsements certainly play a role. As Beyoncé, whose song “Freedom” has been widely used in the Harris campaign, appeared at the Democratic Candidate’s campaign on October 25, she joins a list of many other celebrities who endorsed Harris, including Taylor Swift, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cardi B, Jennifer Lopez, and many more.
One must ask, then, if celebrity endorsements would make a statistically significant enough impact on voter turnouts and Election results, and the answer to both questions is yes.
According to an article by Richard T. Longoria, an associate professor of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, while only 11% of American adults said that celebrity endorsements could impact their votes, among them are 19% of younger voters who said that celebrities might change their votes. The statistics show that celebrity endorsements have more impact on younger voters than on older ones. This is why, after Taylor Swift posted on Instagram last year encouraging her fans to register to vote, data shows a significant increase in voter registration among younger people, including a 72% boost in the number of 18-year-olds who registered to vote after Swift’s post.
There might be several reasons behind the affinity between celebrity endorsements and the political turnout of younger generations: first, as digital natives, they tend to be more responsive to content on social media and assign similar importance to information online as they do to information from conventional media outlets. Second, since Gen Z and Millennials grew up in an environment where celebrities play a major role in a culture of influencers, it should not be surprising that such cultural influences also extend to the field of politics. Moreover, the natural affinity between younger generations and popular culture means that they are more likely to respond to pop celebrities than to traditional political messaging.
While a report from the Pew Research Center has already shown a decade-long trend where “the Democratic Party holds a substantial edge among younger voters,” as more and more celebrities are endorsing Harris, we should expect further growth in the Democratic Party’s advantage over the Republicans among younger voters in the current and future election cycles.
